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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Are you listening to your customers? Do you understand what they are trying to achieve? Are you using what you hear/learn to actually design a better experience for them?

I was thrilled to be interviewed by Leah Berry and to a be part of her 30 Experts in 30 Days series; she asked me questions about employee experience and customer experience, of course, but from a variety of different angles.

We really covered a lot of territory in the interview, but the main questions Leah posed were based on some previous blog posts that I've written.

Please have a listen to our interview; it was a fun conversation. I enjoyed answering all of the questions Leah posed for me. As I mentioned, Leah pulled her questions from some previous posts I wrote, and I've linked to the relevant post for each of the topics we covered below. Check out the links/previous posts for more details around our conversation. But watch the interview first! (It's about 35 minutes long.)

To accompany this interview, Leah provides some great resources for you. I love that she prepared a tip sheet (in addition to the tip infographic above) for you to download and use to put your learnings into action. In addition to our Google Hangout interview, you'll find...

An audio recording of the interview

The transcription of the interview (for those who prefer to read the interviews)

A Top Tips document (to help you remember the key points from the interviews)

A Take Action Worksheet (to help you put the knowledge into action)

Have a look. Have a listen. And come back and feel free to ask me any questions you might have. Thank you!

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. -Ralph Nichols

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Different businesses continue to use the term “Customer Insight” to mean different things.

In our poll of over 100 customer insight leaders, only half considered data management or database marketing to be part of Customer Insight. The majority also had only research reporting into them, not analytics. Does that ring true with your role?

A non-obvious understanding about your customers, which if acted upon, has the potential to change their behaviour for mutual benefit.

I would stress four parts of that definition:

First, that insights are non-obvious; they normally require the convergence of evidence for multiple sources to help spot themes and then dig deeper for motivations.

Second, that true insights need to be actionable, as there is no point learning something unless you can change commercial results or customer experience as a result.

Third, a good test of an “insight” is whether acting on it is powerful enough to change your customers’ behaviour (not just data to target those you believe will act as they have in the past).

Fourth, in this “Age of the Customer,” the importance of trust should mean any insight has the goal of mutual benefit for the organisation and the customer, anything else is short term success for long-term value erosion.

You may need to wear many hats to achieve that kind of insight production from your team. As I've written in the past, you may need to be a Data Scientist, Psychologist, Artist, Storyteller, Sales Coach, Economist, and People Leader. Quite a challenge and perhaps one reason why leaders like you are hard to find.

Some people suggest that Customer Insight is making use of your data, with the current buzzword being “big data.” But it is possible to be drowning in data and still none the wiser about your customers. Perhaps as a result, some leaders appear to equate CI with behavioural analysis and statistical modelling (with the buzzword here being “predictive analytics”). Such analytics can be very powerful, but without an understanding of why customers are behaving as they are, it won’t pass the test of our Insight definition.

You may assume that Customer Insight as a term applies to research, qualitative and quantitative activities focussed on that “why” question. But with the unreliability of self-reporting and the need to behaviourally test what customers actually do, to identify any behavioural economic biases at play, can this really be relied upon by itself? So you might conclude that the only way to know the reality is to test and learn, using targeted communications and measurement from database marketing. That is also very useful, but what understanding helps create what should be tested?

As is probably obvious from that definition, I would recommend that all four of those technical disciplines are needed to create true customer insights. However, it is not just these separate parts operating effectively in isolation, rather the synergies and insights that can be realised by the working together in collaboration. As I’ve heard different experts speak on this topic over the years and seen some of your progress in this regard, it seems to me that we are talking about an ecosystem here. So the challenge for Customer Insight Leaders becomes how to nurture this ecosystem, ensuring each part fulfills its potential and acts symbiotically with others to produce the healthy fruit of actionable customer insights (in a way that feels more organic than mechanistically following a set process).

Ensuring a consistent source of quality data for all the technical teams is at the heart of this ecosystem. Those using that data will need to be skilled research, analytics, and database marketing teams (hopefully brought together in one CI function). Real growth, however it appears, happens when you use these parts together. For example, converging the evidence from analysis and research to produce a more robust picture of how customers are feeling and acting and why. That should enable hypotheses to be generated as to how customers would feel and act if you did something different. Offering something different (communication/experience/product) can then be tested with experimental design using database marketing skills. Once you can see any changes in customer behaviour as a result, also check out the feelings of customers and observe the touch points to get a feel for their new experience. Such research and analysis output then brings us back to the stage of converging evidence and looking for themes (a virtuous circle of continuous improvement).

There is more to customer insight generation than that, but I’ll blog another time about applications like generating insights for proposition design. For now, I wanted to share what is becoming a standard model for me in helping clients.

Do those themes resonate with you? Any other tips you can share?

Paul Laughlin has over 20 years experience of leading teams to generate profit from analysing data. Over the last 12 years he’s created, lead and improved customer insight teams across Lloyds, TSB, Halifax and Scottish Widows. He’s delivered incremental profit of over £10m pa and improved customers’ experiences.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Well, that's a pretty bold statement coming from someone who advocates designing and delivering a great customer experience!

Hold tight. It's not quite as crazy as it sounds!

I came across this quote the other day...

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. -John Wanamaker

... and it got me thinking, as these things do sometimes.

What exactly does that quote mean? I've seen a few interpretations, but I think the most common one revolves around not being able to qualify or quantify the effects of advertising. Which ad brought customers into the store, the weekday or the weekend ad? the radio ad or the newspaper ad? which one caused them to buy? etc.

And that led me to think about a couple different interpretations that can be applied to customer experience.

First, it made me think about how to measure the effectiveness of your customer experience efforts or how to make sure the improvements you make are meaningful to your customers - and to the business. What are some of the metrics you can use to measure your overall efforts? Some examples are listed below, with the first four or five reflecting the voice of the customer, while the rest represent their actions.

satisfaction scores

effort scores

ease of doing business score

net promoter scores

actual referrals

retention rates

renewal rates

order/purchase size

repurchase rate

cross-sells

upsells

customer lifetime value

If your customer experience isn't worthy, it will be reflected in these metrics. But, to the point of Wanamaker's quote, how do you know which half of your CX dollars/efforts resulted in the uptick of these metrics? You've really got to make sure you track and measure your improvements at a much more micro level to capture the real effect of their impact (and then correlate them to overall outcomes). If they're not working, figure out why not and redesign.

Another angle the quote made me think about: don't go crazy and think you need to fix everything. Be systematic about your approach to customer experience design and improvements. Do consider the ROI, but most importantly, consider what's most important to customers. Do those things, fix those aspects, that are most impactful to them. If you make improvements where improvements aren't needed or to those areas that aren't important to your customers or don't move the needle for them, you are wasting your money. Find out what's important to them and start there. How do you find out? Map their journeys. Listen to them. Ask them. Do some analysis (e.g., key driver), and prioritize improvement opportunities.

And, finally, an angle that is related to advertising: stop wasting money on advertising to position your brand. Remember, the experience speaks louder than words. If your advertising is not aligned with your experience, if you say you (are going to) do something and then don't or say you are something that you're not, then you've actually wasted all of your advertising dollars. Spend (or waste) advertising dollars, and customers will be fooled; (re)design the experience, and they will come.

How will you avoid wasting half (or all) of your CX budget?

Listen to customers and determine what's important and impactful to them. Identify your key moments of truth. Improve the experience when and where it matters. Measure the specific improvements. Redesign where you've fallen short.

Focus on the experience, and the business will come.

Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising. -Howard Schultz

Thursday, September 17, 2015

With social media taking over, it is no surprise to see more companies turning toward these digital platforms to connect with customers. Today, successful businesses are utilizing social media not only to build their brand and build strong relationships, but to foster customer relations and provide people with the best service.

One way that businesses are building those relationships is through empathy. Empathy has been defined as the practice of putting yourself into another person’s thoughts, feelings, personality, and circumstances to better understand their desires. By taking time to walk in your customers' shoes, you will be able be more proactive in what you can do, what your services can do, and what the company can do in the long run to help them and serve their needs.How can you use empathy to connect with customers?
Before you start putting together a marketing campaign around empathy, it is important to understand your customers. Take time to talk to them, gather feedback, and know what they are looking for and what they want/need. Hold a brainstorming session with your team, managers, and even stakeholders, to pull in as many ideas through an empathy map exercise.

Throughout the exercise, you will be looking at four aspects of the customer experience: thinking, seeing, doing, and feeling. As you brainstorm about each of these sections, you will not only put yourself in your customers' shoes, but both you and your customers will see a greater ROI all around.

For your customers, as you take the time to actively listen and engage with them, they will feel like their voices are important and validated by your brand. In turn, you will create loyal, long lasting relationships with your customer base. In the end, everyone wins.

How have other businesses used empathy to build better relationships with their customers?
Extra Space Storage recently released a video called, 10 Things I Wish I'd Known Before Having a Baby, where they connected with first-time parents in a touching video to help them navigate through the mounds of parenting advice they’ll be getting. Extra Space Storage built a strong relationship with customers - both current and future - by sharing touching stories/tips from real parents.

Another excellent example is with Google Chrome, who created the video, Dear Sophie, to connect with dads. In their campaign, Google Chrome touched on those tender moments of fathers watching their children grow and wanting to preserve those moments in a unique way.

In both campaigns, Extra Space Storage and Google Chrome were able to connect with their customers, and potential customers, that went deeper than the product and services they offer.

How can your brand build a deeper connection?
Utilize the empathy map exercise with your team. Print out a copy for everyone, get a large white board, and get everyone to throw out their ideas in the brainstorming session. Ask open-ended questions such as, “What are our customer’s daily habits and rituals?” “How do they feel after using our product?” and “What are they doing to change their lives?” and write down the answers. After the brainstorming session, take time to debrief as a group and create some actionable things you can do (on all levels) to make the customer experience better.

You may have to go through this exercise a few times, but each time you practice this, you will gain better insights into your customers and what you can do for them. The important thing to remember is, at the end of the day, your customers need to feel like they’ve been heard.

Empathy is an excellent way to show them that they have been heard and you care about what they have to say.

Brooke Cade is a freelance writer with InMoment. When she is not writing, Brooke is committed to learning more about helping businesses and sales professionals improve their customer experience.

Current state maps show the steps that customers take today to complete some task, while future state maps show the steps they will be taking to complete the task after the process has been redesigned.

Future state maps are realistic (not ridiculous) representations of what the experience will become. In other words, inefficiencies and painpoints identified in the current state will be eliminated when the script is rewritten for the future state. This should be differentiated from a “wishful state map,” which I’ll define as an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-wouldn’t-that-be-cool-if-it-could-do-that kind of experience map. Maybe you’ll get there someday, but for now, let’s focus on what’s realistic for the future state, since that’s challenging enough for most to achieve.

I love when people are excited to map the future state; that means that change is about to happen, and for most customer experiences, this is a great thing! But know that the future state map is not the first map you’ll ever create, nor is it something you’ll do immediately after creating the current state map. There’s some research that needs to be done first.

Why?

Because you can't transform something you don't understand.

And you can't jump ahead to the last chapter of the book without reading the 17 chapters that come before it.

Let’s step back a second and look at the current state map. During the current state mapping exercise, you’ll uncover what the customer is doing, thinking, and feeling; what’s going well; what isn’t; and what those key moments of truth are. Today. What you won’t be doing is problem solving or designing the experience of tomorrow. You’re not looking for solutions at this stage; you’re simply trying to understand what the customer experience is now.

After that current state map is complete, you are not yet equipped to create a future state map. Why? Because of the most important rule of journey mapping. If you create a future state map now, you’ll be perpetuating inside-out thinking; you’ll map an experience based on what you believe the customer wants rather than asking – or listening to – the customer. There are a couple more steps before you get there.

Your next step is to ensure you bring the customer voice into the map, validate the current state, and talk to customers about what they are trying to achieve, what problems they are trying to solve, what their expectations are, and more.

During your map validation exercise - after you've validated the current state - you might pose the following to customers:

I’m going to put you in the driver’s seat now. I’m going to ask you to think about this task again and tell me how you would design the journey.

What would the ideal experience look like to you?

How would you change the process/steps you go through now to {insert your scenario}?

Let customers know that you’re looking for their ideal experience and that this exercise is informative and will help direct your thinking as you move into ideation, innovation, and redesign. Only with this information can you begin to formulate what the future state map will look like. Create the map based on your customer listening and research.

Here's the bottom line. We can’t design the future state without first understanding the current state. We can’t move from current state to future state without customer research. We need to stop ourselves from wanting to design the experience for the customer without customer input. That’s how we got to where we are. That’s why the experience is what it is today.

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. -Albert Einstein

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Today I'm pleased to present a guest post by Blair McHaney, president of Club Works, Inc.

Great athletes have great proprioception. Great customer experience athletes have great “social proprioception.” View this short video, which explains the concept.

Proprioception is an individual's ability to sense where he/she is “in space.” Without video, coach feedback, or seeing with one’s own eyes, they still have a high degree of awareness as to their entire body position. Rory McIlroy knows exactly where the club is pointing on his backswing. Giancarlo Stanton knows exactly where the bat is even while focusing on the spin of the baseball. There is no delusion about what they can and can't do. See our blog about Grandiose CX Delusional Disorder, a similar affliction.

Hold that thought and engage me in the concept of “social proprioception.” We coined this term at our clubs to help staff understand that everything matters when it comes to the member experience. Our definition: Social Proprioceptionis the ability to sense the emotional affect a person has on anyone able to observe his/her actions.

This applies to anyone, but let’s start with personal trainers. In reading literally thousands of member comments from hundreds of gyms, I can sum up most of the feelings like this:

Trainers only talk to you if getting paid.

Trainers don’t care about anyone except those that pay.

How do so many people at so many different gyms get the same feeling? Well, good trainers are focused on their clients. And good trainers have full schedules. Couldn’t those two things alone create the negative perception? Yes, but so what? You still can’t excuse it. Moreover, just telling your trainers (or any other position) to “be more friendly” is not a teaching tool.

Let’s fix that by using the concept of “social proprioception” (SP) as a teaching tool. We might even include this before we hire anyone in any position: Around here we require every employee to understand and demonstrate extremely high levels of social proprioception!

Once we frame up the concept, we can start to teach it and build awareness.

Level 1 SP is constant awareness that what I say, how friendly I am, and whether I wipe down equipment will send a message to my client.

Level 2 SP is constant awareness that doing the same will send a message to my client and the person next to us.

Level 3 SP is constant awareness that, by adding a quick and casual conversation with the person next to us it, will send an even stronger message. At this level, I begin to recognize the importance of the messages I send when I engage outside my immediate circle

Level 4 SP is constant awareness that my inclusive behavior is a strong message to those near me and perhaps even stronger to the 62-year old woman on the treadmill 50 feet away who has been watching and judging our staff friendliness based on her “facts,” what she sees.

Last week, I was training at a very popular gym. I have never seen so many trainers as consistently busy as I saw in this place. Like at a lot of gyms, the floor is easily observed when doing cardio.
What I notice here is how engaged these trainers are with their clients. No one is just “counting reps.” They are all in close proximity to other people and focused. But it is as though they have a circle drawn around them that constitutes their entire world. If I have very high SP and am only focused on my client, then I am aware that I am sending an isolationist, exclusive signal to all others in the gym. My awareness might change my behavior to a more open and inclusive presentation of myself.

Now, what if all 15 trainers did this at the same time? How powerful would that message be throughout the entire gym? It wouldn’t take much to transform this entire environment into a “neighborhood.”

Know that you can be fully engaged with your clients AND fully engaged with your surroundings.

Know that how friendly you are to non-clients is how you are judged by 95% of members.

Know that this is your marketing program AT LEAST as much as client referrals.

When selecting an employee, require that he/she be both an excellent trainer (or instructor, front desk associate, etc.) and a great customer experience athlete.

Please share ways you teach and demonstrate “Social Proprioception” in the comments below.

Blair McHaney is a teacher, student, and practitioner of Customer Experience Management. He spent 2.5 years in Palo Alto California as VP of Strategic Initiatives for Medallia, the world's leading customer experience management technology company. He is currently President of Club Works Inc., a Medallia Partner Company, specializing in Customer Experience Management (CEM) for the fitness industry and an educator for the Medallia Institute. He is President of Confluence Fitness Partners, Inc., operating health clubs in the Wenatchee Valley of Washington State for over 30 years. Blair has both a high-level theoretical understanding of how companies build loyalty as well as a ground-level operational understanding.

In this latest TED Talk, he introduces the holy trinity of efficiency - clarity, accountability, and measurement - and makes you think twice about whether: (1) these three really make you more efficient - or less efficient - and (2) you're focusing on the right things to do your job and to be productive.

I like things that make us think differently and question or challenge "conventional wisdom."

Yves uses the example of a relay race and how cooperation is key; in his words...

Miracle of cooperation: it multiplies energy, intelligence in human efforts. It is the essence of human efforts: how we work together, how each effort contributes to the efforts of others. With cooperation, we can do more with less.

... and talks about how that holy trinity can really muck things up for the runners in the race - and for you.

We're so driven by clarity and clarifying everything that we, instead, put up these boundaries that require people to work within them, within this box. And if they step outside, they either don't know what to do or fear doing something they shouldn't.

With regards to accountability, he believes what we're really looking for is someone to blame when the thing we're trying to do fails. We spend more time making sure we know who to blame than making sure everyone is set up for success.

And, finally, when it comes to measurement, we've been taught to follow the mantra, what gets measured gets done. But are we measuring the right things and, hence, doing the right things? Are we focusing on the right metric to get the job done in the best way?

He sums it all up nicely here:

You know, this drive for clarity and accountability triggers a counterproductive multiplication of interfaces, middle offices, coordinators that do not only mobilize people and resources, but that also add obstacles. And the more complicated the organization, the more difficult it is to understand what is really happening. So we need summaries, proxies, reports, key performance indicators, metrics. So people put their energy in what can get measured, at the expense of cooperation. And as performance deteriorates, we add even more structure, process, systems. People spend their time in meetings, writing reports they have to do, undo and redo. Based on our analysis, teams in these organizations spend between 40 and 80 percent of their time wasting their time, but working harder and harder, longer and longer, on less and less value-adding activities. This is what is killing productivity, what makes people suffer at work.

He believes that too many rules, processes, and metrics are keeping us from doing our best work and that the one thing to save us is cooperation, i.e., how we get things done, together. Critical to this, though, is a culture of cooperation, a culture that supports us doing our best work together by simplifying and by focusing on the parts that really matter - and by remembering that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Without a doubt, executives need to be on board with this shift in thinking (and doing).

What do you think? Does that holy trinity get in the way of your employees doing their best work? Are those three items obstacles to being efficient and productive?

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. -Peter Drucker

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

I originally wrote today's post for Intradiem. It appeared on their blog on March 19, 2015.

"Treat employees better than customers."

What? Isn't that sacrilegious?

There's a huge debate in life: what came first, the chicken or the egg? In business, the debate is: who comes first, the customer or the employee?

The answer is more obvious than it might seem: it must be the employee, even if it's just slightly more first than customers.

Why?

There is a clear and solid linkage between the employee experience and the customer experience that is solidly supported by data and statistics. The problem is, many companies still refuse to make the employee experience a priority, focusing instead on shareholder value, the bottom line, and/or the customer experience (first) without considering the implications of a poor employee experience on all of the above.

What gives?

Perhaps we don't want to just "treat employees better;" maybe it's more about doing right by employees and putting just as much, if not slightly more, effort into the employee experience. Right now, that's not happening nearly often enough, if at all.

Too many executives have the mindset that they'll focus on the employees and their experience "later." This isn't healthy. Without your employees, you have no customer experience. Remember, people buy from people. The linkage between customer experience and employee engagement has been proven. It's real, and your employees matter! If your employees aren't engaged, it will be very difficult for them to delight your customers; in very simple terms, this describes the spillover effect, defined as “the tendency of one person’s emotions to affect how other people around him feel.”

So where do you begin? How do you ensure that the employee experience within your organization is optimal?

When it comes to designing a great employee experience, the steps are really not much different from designing a great customer experience: we must first understand - because we cannot transform something we don't understand. So we start with employee understanding. I would recommend that you start that understanding phase/exercise with the candidate experience and then understand how that bleeds into the employee experience, should the candidate choose to accept your offer.

How do we do that? There are three steps that become the foundation for designing a great employee experience.

1. Develop employee personas.
Personas are fictional characters and create realistic representations of the most significant employee groups. They are derived through both qualitative and quantitative primary research and include vivid narratives, images, and other details that help companies understand the needs of their employees; they also outline motivations, goals, behaviors, challenges, likes, dislikes, objections, and interests of the employees. To humanize and to bring the persona to life, so people can clearly relate, give each one a human face and name.

The personas will likely include details about department, tenure, career goals, age, interests outside of the immediate job at hand, and more.2. Map the employee journey for a variety of tasks that employees do every day
Journey mapping creates awareness for the steps that an employee takes to do whatever it is that he's trying to do within the organization. Take a look at major tasks, likely identified as a result of employee feedback (from surveys, suggestions boxes, conversations with managers, stay interviews, exit interviews, etc.), that you want to map, conduct mapping workshops, talk to employees about the steps they go through to do each task, and identify key moments of truth. These maps must be created in the employee voice and validated by employees.

Maps really brings the employee experience to life, allowing company leadership to understand what employees are going through as they complete some task, as well as to create that empathy that is equally important to creating a great employee experience as it is to creating a great customer experience. Maps will facilitate a culture transformation - to employee-centric and customer-centric.

Check out the webinar I did with Intradiem's VP of Marketing, Kyle Antcliff, for more details about employee journey mapping.

3. Listen to employees and incorporate their feedback into experience and process improvements
There are a lot of ways to listen to employees, as I noted above: from surveys to suggestion boxes to conversations to stay interviews. The important thing is, when you capture their feedback, you must act on it - you must do something with it. Nothing frustrates employees more than when they tell their managers that something is wrong or takes too much effort, and managers don't really listen and certainly don't act on what they've been told.

With those three foundational steps in place, you're equipped with the information you need to design and deliver a great experience for your employees.

That's important because, when employees have a great experience with their employers, not only does it translate to a great customer experience but also leads to employees become raving fans of the brand and of the organization. Raving (employee) fans...

want to see the company succeed and grow

do whatever it takes to make that happen

provide feedback, good or bad, to support the business success

are more likely to stay

openly and actively recruit new employees

recommend their friends and family work for the company

share their joy and passion with customers (and other employees)

are more able to sell something they believe in

are company evangelists and spread the word about the brand

wear the brand and want to show that they are part of something bigger than themselves

Because of that enthusiasm and passion for the brand, for the business, employees are eager to contribute to its success. And when we're all working together for the success of the business, I believe that, ultimately, customers will win, too. As will your shareholders.

Treat fellow employees the way you want the customer to be treated - maybe even better. -Shep Hyken

About CX Journey Inc.

CX Journey Inc. is a consulting firm specializing in laying the groundwork required to establish a CX strategy that will drive your culture transformation efforts. Our beliefs are that (1) customer understanding along the customer experience journey is key to developing a strategy that allows both customers and businesses to achieve their desired outcomes, and (2) the employee experience cannot be an afterthought.

Why CX Journey™?

You know the quote, "Success is a journey, not a destination." Well, the customer experience is a journey, too. It's a never-ending journey. Once you've designed the best experience for customers today, their needs change, their expectations evolve, customers change, etc. You'll need to think about the experience today and listen for - and anticipate - what lies ahead. You must always strive to deliver that ultimate customer experience, not only at a single touchpoint but also - especially - along the entire journey. Have you taken the first step?

"Knowing where you're going is the first step to get there." -Ken Blanchard

"It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end." - Hemingway